The Traiteur's Ring (47 page)

“Chris – behind you.”

The voice sounded like Reed, and Ben felt a belt tighten around his throat.

Then, he heard the burst of an AK-47, short pain-filled screams – and then silence.

The heat that built in his chest felt so powerful that he thought at first he had been hit again by fireballs from the demon who stood in front of him. But the terrorist still looked out towards the tunnel, and Ben could think about nothing but his friends.

“The power is in
you
, Ben.”

He didn’t know if the voice belonged to the old man, the Indian, or maybe himself, but he knew it was true.

He saw Christy’s smiling face in his mind and felt the heat spread from his chest, down his arms. This time the blue light burned brighter as it burst from his fingertips.

The sparkling spheres of energy pulsated into the raised arms of the demon in front of him as a horrible scream echoed in the cave like room. White light exploded from the center of demons chest and it dropped to one knee– its legs turning into a horse-like limbs with a cloven hooves.

The demon sprang forward on the animal legs and raised its long, clawed arms above its now lizard like head. The long teeth dripped blood and spit onto the floor, its arms pulsating with red light.

“You are too late, Rougarou.” The words came from the horrible demon like mouth which seemed no longer to move. There was no longer even a flicker of the man-like terrorist from before.

“Fuck you,” Ben screamed. Images of Reed and Chris – perhaps dying now in the tunnel and just out of reach – fueled the heat in his chest to a higher level. A single ball of blue light shot from his hands and smashed into the creatures head, this time with enough force to drive it backwards into the wall.

Ben knew his moment had now arrived and pressed his advantage. He thought again of Reed and Chris and squeezed his eyes tightly closed

 Images of Viper Team, Reed, Christy, Jewel, and his unborn son played rapidly in his mind’s eye. With each image the pressure and heat inside him grew larger until he could no longer contain it. He felt he would explode into flames from inside. Instead of tingling down his arms, the vibration this time climbed up the back of his throat and Ben opened his mouth.

Again the demon creature appeared as the terrorist leader, the face bloody and the back of the head missing. He dropped both of his hands to his sides and felt his entire body tense as the energy surged out of him. He felt every joint stretch and even his flesh seemed to pull away from the muscles underneath. Ben thought his eyes would explode as the fire-blue light erupted out of his mouth and struck the terrorist mid-torso. For a moment blue fire spread out over the man’s body, his red glow replaced with blue. But then a huge circle of white grew in the center of his chest, and the blue column of flame-like light burst out his back.  An enormous hole formed where the light had struck him. Ben could see, with what little vision he had left, the wall of the room through the gaping hole in the center of the man.

As the blue light spread over him, the man’s flesh began to melt, falling to the ground in huge chunks. Ben watched from some faraway place as the bloody, bearded face slid off like a fleshy, hideous mask and landed in a steaming pile on the floor. A moment later, the terrorist shed like a burning snake the rest of his outer shell and the red-skinned demon creature stood before him, thrashing violently under the unleashed power of the Rougarou.

Ben felt anger, hatred for the creature that twisted in the blue light in front of him, and love – love for his team, for his wife, for Jewel – for his son. The emotions churned, coursing through his body.  It seemed like gasoline on the fire of the blue light that poured from him with a ferocity that made him feel like he might explode in fragmented pieces. A bat-like shriek echoed off the walls from the wide open, snarling snout of the creature. Then, the red skin of the lumpy head and face began to smoke – and then boil – a moment later the creature evaporated in a cloud of smoke and foul smelling steam. The scream echoed down the tunnel and was gone.

Ben collapsed forward and caught himself painfully on outstretched arms. The world spun around him in a terrible vertigo, and he tasted blood and bile in his throat. Then, the room went black, and he felt himself slip away.

Chapter 47

“What the hell was that?” Chris’s voice sounded tense but not afraid, and Reed spun around to the sound they both heard behind them. He aimed his rifle carefully, placed the red-dot center mass in the terrorist’s chest, but just as he started to squeeze the trigger, the image came into real focus and for a second he froze.

The terrorist had only one arm – the left arm had been torn away a few inches below the shoulder – except for half of a foot of ragged bone that ended just above where the elbow would have been. He also had a gigantic hole in his chest through which Reed could see the grayish-green heart convulse periodically in some sort of spastic beat. The man’s throat had been torn out, and his head ended in a bloody hole just above his eyebrows – the rest blown away, likely from a high-caliber round from the snipers.

It took Reed less than a second to take the image in, and then he re-sighted his rifle at the man who could not possibly be alive. Before he fired, he heard Chris’s rifle explode and drown out his teammate’s “What in the fuckin’ hell?” Then, Reed squeezed his own trigger twice.

One round tore away the right side of the terrorist’s remaining face, one hit him in the stump that remained of his left arm, and the third blew away the bottom portion of the spastic heart in the chest. In response, the man dropped to one knee, steadied himself with the rifle in his remaining arm, and then slowly stood back up. Reed felt his mouth drop open at the impossible sight and felt his rifle drop towards the ground. His shocked mind was no longer able to send the proper signals to his body.

“I’m dreaming this,” he whispered.

“What the shit?” Chris screamed.

And then the corpse raised the AK-47 just as Reed finally noticed the second, equally mutilated, corpse beside the first. Both AK-47s erupted, their muzzle flashes blinding in his NVGs, and Reed felt the hot rounds tear through his body. His last thought before the world turned grey was that gunshot wounds hurt like shit, unlike what he had heard before and remembered from his last injuries.

Reed felt the world tilt violently back and forth and worried he would vomit and then choke in his own puke. He tasted blood and something else – bile maybe – and stared at the hazy image a few inches from his face. It took a moment for his brain to identify it as Chris’s boot. He saw it looked covered in blood – black in the green world of the NVGs which somehow were still in front of his eyes. Reed tried to push up with his arms, to get his face out of the dirt, but he found with a sort of detached interest that his body would not do anything he told it to do. He felt like he still breathed, could hear a bubbly kind of noise that he thought might be his breath – though it could have just as likely been Chris, he supposed. He turned his head slightly and focused slowly on a tennis shoe-covered foot. As he did, he felt with some sort of sixth sense that the terrorist’s rifle was aimed at his head.

He felt incredibly calm and sort of not really there.

I guess I’m dead. Isn’t that a son of a bitch? I hope Ben is okay.

Then he felt the cold metal of the rifle barrel against his temple, and he closed his eyes softly.

Fuck me.

There was a brilliant flash of blue light and a horrible scream which he assumed was the rifle shot and his own last dying gasp – except that he still felt, well,
everything
. He felt the burning pain in his chest and belly and a coldness in both feet. Then, he heard a wet thud and tasted dirt in his mouth. Reed squeezed his eyes shut to clear the tears that blurred his vision, and then registered the mutilated face of the terrorist, the top of the head still missing. As he watched a faint orange glow faded in the milky eyes and winked out.

Then, the world really did turn black.

*   *   *

Ben opened his eyes and his first thought was of Reed and Chris outside in the tunnel. He scrambled painfully to his feet as every muscle in his body screamed in protest. He had heard of horrible muscle pain in victims of electrocution, and he imagined it felt exactly like this. He also had a nasty, charred wood taste in his mouth – as if he had taken a big bite of the ash in the bottom of a fireplace. He guessed the taste may have been the source of his thoughts about electrocution. His eyes were drawn to a black circle in the middle of the room (which now had a soft blue glow instead of red). The charred circle was all that marked what had happened and looked like the remnants of a bonfire but with all the wood and soot removed. He did see one red, high-top tennis shoe lying on its side at the periphery of the charred circle. A thin tendril of bluish smoke rose from the otherwise empty shoe.

Ben shook his head and then limped towards the entrance to the room and out into the tunnel. The sight that greeted him squeezed his chest and throat, and he struggled not to vomit.

Reed lay face down, his head turned away from Ben and his arms at his sides. He lay in a lake of his own dark blood. Chris lay on his back at a ninety degree angle to Reed, his booted right foot only a few inches from Reed’s face. His cammie pants were soaked and glistening with blood, but more terrifying was the round hole in his forehead just above his left eye. A mutilated – and now clearly lifeless – terrorist corpse had crumpled on top of Chris, what was left of the head across his right thigh. The one remaining eye was open and held no orange glow. A few yards away lay the discombobulated heap of another body – another bad guy he saw with some relief.

Ben raced to Reed’s side and gently rolled him over. His best friend’s eyes flickered, unseeing.  His mouth opened and closed like a guppy spilled out of its bowl onto the bathroom floor.  Ben heard a sob escape his own throat.

“Reed – Oh, God, Reed, I’m so sorry, buddy. I’m so sorry, Reed.” Then, the tears spilled out of his eyes and he cried uncontrollably. He felt Reed’s shoulders tense rhythmically as he struggled for breath.

Ben lay his friend back in the dirt and stared at the unseeing eyes that moved back in forth beneath grayish lids. Then, he reached out and placed both hands on Reed’s chest. The familiar warm vibration began immediately, and he saw the ring turn to a pulsating orange. Then, his vision blurred with a milky white halo, and he closed his eyes tightly.

He could feel the heat in both of his arms and a moment later his mouth turned coppery with the taste of blood. He felt an excruciating, ripping pain in both sides of his chest. He felt suddenly unable to breathe as his chest got heavy and his lungs filled with the murky liquid death. He fought away the dizziness and kept both hands on his best friend’s chest, intent on taking all of his pain and all of his wounds.

Blood filled his mouth and, unable to find the strength to spit, he opened his lips, letting it pour over his chin. He felt the warm and sticky wetness spill over his chest. He felt the world tilt and became aware that his hands had lost contact with Reed, but he couldn’t stop the momentum and fell painfully on his side next to his friend.

Ben could hear his own moaning and the bizarre vibration throughout his entire body. But he could think only about his painful, desperate need for air. He heard a bubbling sound each time he strained to suck in a breath and would have screamed, if only he could get some Goddamn air.

Slowly the heaviness began to ebb and just as his consciousness started to fade he felt a little puff work its way into his chest. He pushed it back out with all of his might, and then sucked again and this time felt a much bigger gulp slowly expand his burning chest. It took great effort – like trying to breathe through a three-foot long straw, but eventually his lungs filled with sweet oxygen. He again squeezed down to force it back out as he felt his mind clearing. The next breath came easier – and the next – until he breathed almost normally, a throbbing headache replaced his dizziness.

Ben opened his eyes and shook his head. He found his face to be only inches from Reed’s, and although his friend’s eyes were closed, he saw his skin now looked pink and healthy.  His breath went in and out of his open mouth with normal ease. Dried blood caked on Reed’s face, but no longer bubbled out of his mouth. He struggled to his knees on the hard floor of the tunnel next to his best friend.

There were four black holes in Reed’s vest and Ben tore apart the Velcro flaps that held it in place. Beneath the body armor the same four holes looked back at him from Reed’s Cammie shirt and beneath that his T-shirt. Both were completely soaked in reddish death. Ben tore the T-shirt away.

The skin of Reed’s chest beneath his clothes was also soaked in blood, and Ben smeared it away to get a better look. He stared in joy and disbelief at the smooth, unblemished skin beneath the bullet holes in Reed’s clothes. The chest rose and fell slowly and softly, with apparent ease.

I did it. I fuckin’ did it. He’s gonna be okay.

Then he turned and shuffled on his knees over to Chris. He pushed what was left of the corpses head off of the legs of his team mate and looked him over. From the waist down, his cammies were soaked in blood and Ben saw two bullet holes on Chris’s right hip where the high velocity rounds had torn through his pelvis, no doubt shattering it and his hip joints. God only knew how much damage they did on their way through. Those injuries would be devastating – he doubted if he survived he could ever again walk – but they were the least of his problems. Ben stared at the dark round hole in his friend’s forehead as he felt for a pulse in Chris’s neck – there was none.

Ben felt the tears flow down his cheeks. Chris should be at home with his wife – not dead in some dirty tunnel in the middle of nowhere thousands of miles away. Ben realized with great pain, that if not for him, that was exactly where Chris would be.